1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and article of manufacture for using priority to determine whether to queue an input/output (I/O) request directed to storage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Storage protocols may specific conditions under which application programs to assign priorities to Input/Output (I/O) requests the application programs generate for a storage device, such that the controller or server processing the I/O requests may utilize the priority when determining how to manage the I/O requests. Recent enhancements to the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) allow the host application to specify through a priority value a relative scheduling importance of a task in the I/O transmission. Processing of a collection of tasks with different task priorities should cause the subset of tasks with the higher priority to return status sooner in aggregate than the same subset would if the same collection of tasks were submitted under the same conditions but with all task priorities being equal.
There is a need in the art for improved techniques for utilizing the priorities assigned to I/O requests to improve the processing of I/O requests directed to a common storage.